On December 9-10 2021, President Biden hosted the first two summits for democracy with an agenda to bring together leaders from governments, civil societies to bring democratic renewal and to tackle the threats faced by democracies nowadays.

At the summit around 100 countries prepared to convene virtually and China is busy trying to convince the world that it is also a democracy and it functions better than the US. China has always tried to convince its citizens that it is a real democracy even though the rest of the world believes otherwise.

In the wake of the same, China released a white paper titled “China: Democracy that works”. It stated that democracy is a common value of humanity and an idea that has always been cherished by the Communist Party of China it added that people in a democracy are regarded as the masters of the country and China’s whole process is based on result-oriented democracy and it is a model of socialist democracy that covers all the aspects of society.

The paper also stated that whether a country is democratic or not it should be judged by its people not by a handful of outsiders. Xu Lin, minister of the state council information office said that democracy is the right of the people of all countries and it is not a patent of few. They even criticised the US democracy that even though the country considers itself as a leader of democracy but in reality, they have suppressed the other countries with various social systems under the umbrella of democracy.

China may claim that it is a democratic country but it does not fulfil the requirements of democracy and it appears ironic when they make such statements and this question becomes important as to why Beijing is so invested in claiming its democracy even though the world knows it is not.

It is pertinent to note that democracy has become an important feature in the international arena since the second world war. That's why China took a step to state its justifications for being a democratic country.

The first justification made by China is its National Party Congress which is the Parliament in China and claims to establish the grassroots of democracy in the country but in reality, it is known that NPC doesn’t come up with the laws, the laws in China are discussed and passed by the standing committee of Politburo and NPC merely rubber stamps the law and that only becomes the law it has been argued by the experts that NPC doesn’t make laws like the other countries such as the UK or the US or any country where the laws are made with the proper parliamentary process.

The second justification provided by China is that there is a presence of village democracy in the country and elections in the villages though previously they have provided some relaxations regarding the voting rights for the individuals now the party has made sure that the person who gets elected to the role of party secretary for the village is usually who is liked by the party and no one who all are standing in the opposition can become the secretary. The second argument is that China allows the advisors to work within the Chinese Consultative Conference and herein the advisors can give their opinion for the formulation of policy and about how the country should run but it is known from the Chinese sources that the opinions of these advisors don’t matter and their opinions don’t shape up the policies of the country and these advisors are supposed to be a part of the united front system and their work is to influence the local community as to what the party wants, therefore, again they fail the test of democracy.

The third justification provided by them is that China has a significant number of villages where the elections do happen and for this reason, they should be considered as a democratic country but this has also changed significantly after Xi Jinping came into power as now they make sure whoever becomes the secretary should be liked by the party or should be someone who can work according to the party thus no opposition can come into power thus it cannot be said that the elections happen as they happen in democratic countries.

The last justification provided by them is that China has eight political parties but they are not part of the kind of democratic process as we have in Asia or elsewhere as these parties are just for a namesake where they are kept to make a kind of notion that China functions as a democratic country and the leaders of these parties are also not independent at all.
Numerous claims can be made by China where they can reiterate that they function as a democratic but in reality, they don’t and the whole world knows that. All the processes which may appear democratic in nature are being kept for the hidden agendas and for creating a kind of notion or appearance of a democratic country.